1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system and the configuration for setting the options of the printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
When options for a printer such as a network card are set, it is quite common that exclusive tools supplied together with the printer are used. Such exclusive tools are as follows:
(1) Utilities designed for individual operating systems
(2) WEB page residing in the printer
The utilities for individual operating systems are designed in accordance with the features and functions of the operating systems. Therefore, they usually provide the high degree of user-friendliness. For example, the utility continues to be displayed in a minimum space on a screen and is in a standby state, thereby allowing the user to monitor the status of the printer. In addition, when trouble occurs within the printer, a dialogue box can be displayed automatically.
The WEB page installed in a printer is displayed on a WEB browser and can operate on the WEB browser. Therefore, a single WEB page can perform its functions on almost any operating systems. However, functions that the browser does not have can not be implemented, so that the WEB page as a tool for setting options has less user-friendliness than individual utilities provided on corresponding operating systems.
In recent years, printers have been used in a wide variety of environments and the printers and their options are increasingly expanding. The same is true for the aforementioned two tools. From a standpoint of expansion of functions, expanding utilities involves tremendous development costs since each operating system requires its own utility expansion. On the other hand, a single WEB page installed in a printer can operate on different operating systems and therefore requires less development cost. To make full use of the features of the aforementioned two tools, it has been considered that expansion of the utilities of individual operating systems should be minimized and further expansion should be achieved by a WEB page installed in the printer.
Such a tool may be used when the printer is to perform operations different from the standard operations in a specific situation.
However, the tools of the aforementioned configuration suffer from the following problems. It is desirable that installment of options and modification to the settings of options are performed by an authorized person only. In other words, from a standpoint of security, it is not preferable that all the persons who have access to the printer are allowed to modify the settings of the options. For this purpose, the aforementioned two types of tools are designed to request an operator to input identification information such as a password indicating that the operator is an authorized person.
With the configuration in which a WEB page installed in a printer is activated to perform functions not available in the utilities in individual operating systems, both the utility and the WEB page require identification information for identifying an authorized person. This implies that when the authorized person installs options and/or modifies settings, he must input the identification information (e.g., password) many times.